Learning More from Your Links in Email Marketing

Well-placed call to action links are the bread and butter of email marketing. Ideally, you want a lot of your readers to click the links in your messages and to take action once they arrive at the landing page you linked them to. Note: Studies show that placing 6 to 10 links within an email message will generate the highest number of clicks.

Unfortunately, not everyone who clicks your email links is going to take action. That’s okay. There is still quite a bit of valuable information you can learn from those clicks…if you have the right analytics setup and are willing to take the time to follow up with those clickers.

Here are just a few things you can do to get more from your click-through data.

• Send a follow-up offer—If someone clicks a link but doesn’t take action when they reach your landing page, that doesn’t mean they aren’t a serious buyer. It could just mean the offer wasn’t right for them or they’re just taking a little more time to consider making the purchase. Don’t just let these inactive clickers slip away so easily. Send them a follow-up offer. Make the follow-up offer more compelling than the first one. This could be labeled as a “second chance” or “last chance” offer to really increase the offer’s importance and time-sensitivity.

• Ask clickers why they didn’t take action—No click should go unnoticed. For anyone who clicks and doesn’t take action, send them a short survey that will help you determine why they didn’t take action. The survey could have a few simple options for why they didn’t take action, such as:
1. The price was too high
2. The website didn’t have the information I was looking for
3. I’m taking time to shop around

The point is you want to pinpoint what it is about your links and landing pages that is preventing clickers from taking action. This will allow you to modify them in the future so that they receive the best conversion rate possible.

• Create links that reveal more information about clicker—Too many email marketers use generic links like “Click here to learn more about our bikes.” The thing is, this doesn’t really tell you anything about your clickers. Instead, you can use action-oriented links with messages that glean information about those clicking. Going back to the bike example, you could have a link that says “Do you have young kids who love to bike? Check out our latest safety tips for kids biking” Then, whoever clicks that link, you can determine they have kids who bike, and in the future, you can market kids biking products to them.

How do you track the success of your email marketing campaign? Share your tips in the replies!